IMproPRieTies

Where good taste, clear and distinct ideas, and graceful modulations tend to be viewed with lowering suspicion.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

The stax of our trax

Am I wrong?

One needs to hear as wide a variety of musics as possible when young. Listening to Beethoven (e.g.) when one is 14 unlocks doors in the soul the way repeated video game use unlocks hidden areas and characters. Listening to music may very well chalk forth something of our destinies.

Listening to Beethoven (e.g.) on NPR (or the wretched WQXR) when one is older than, say, 40 opens nothing. It's merely reaffirming the purported validity of familiar parts of the soul.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

ecrasez l'infame

Media critics, who so often less than fruitfully take issue with what bogus channels like Fox are saying, might consider looking more carefully into what, and whose existence, such channels do not, under any circumstances, acknowledge.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

dirty bullavid

I have a feeling this image would be showing up on dirty beloved if there were world enough and time:

The randomness of the thought is somewhat attritted by my having received the image, made by Viktor Bulla, from dirty beloved's maker. Circumstances directly attributable to Alan Greenspan have make it difficult for Mike to be online - and I know he misses that, as those of us who love his blog, miss him.

Of reading aloud

A New York Times editorialist discovers reading aloud. There's much to be said for it. A group of us have been reading a variety of texts aloud for several years now, and it brings both pleasure and discovery. If you go back far enough, every written thing, with the possible exception of mercantile receipts, was meant to be voiced and listened to. In the textures and wit of storytellers of Greece, Rome, the Old Testament, the "Middle Ages," and the Renaissance (as Benjamin keeps reminding us) are voices scored (scarred?) by the received wisdom gleaned in manifold retellings in plural settings, with diverse audiences, contexts, and contexts. Nobody except Sid Caesar gets anything right right off, do they?

Friday, May 15, 2009

Evil Sprites from the North, eh?

NAOMI KLEIN: You know, I just would just add, you know, that clip that you played earlier of Obama saying, you know, we’re not starting from scratch—true, no country is ever starting from scratch. But when you look at the way all of these various crises are interrelated, the healthcare crisis with the financial sector crisis with the manufacturing sector crisis, you could not imagine a moment when there—which was more ripe for possibility of actually stepping back and going, “This whole thing is broken; how do we rebuild this in a way that makes sense?” There’s not going to be another moment like this, Amy, you know?

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s interesting that they’re not questioning nationalizing the debt of—and bailing out these banks and these other companies, like AIG, but they question nationalizing the cost of healthcare, which involves everyone.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yes, that this—they agree with the Republicans: that would be socialism. So, yes, it’s true. Avi and I are from a socialist—the socialist country of Canada, would that it were so.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Helots' own JSTOR shoebox

Breaking JSTOR open, a little bit at a time:

Bill Thayer has transcribed a bunch of out-of-copyright scholarly articles and created a subsite called the Antiquary’s Shoebox to hold them. This sort of stuff is normally only on JSTOR, so very valuable to we helots whose duty in life is to pay for the latter, without getting access to it. link.